A reunion of respectable elderly gentlemen and a handful of ladies. The Club of Rome, famous for sounding the global alarm in its groundbreaking report of the early 1970s, is convening in Amsterdam over the next few days. The doom scenario they predicted all those decades ago failed to materialise. But the Club continues to issue warnings, it professes "in order to inspire others".

An admission price of 850 euros per person and the conspicuous absence of young people is not helping the Club of Rome shake off its image as a gathering of wise old men in 2009.

In 1968, when this select society was founded, it mainly consisted of young but concerned scientists who shared a bleak vision of the future. The society focused on essential issues such as economic growth, the challenge of feeding an ever-increasing global population and the consequences for the future of the planet as a whole.

In 1972 their efforts resulted in the groundbreaking report entitled The Limits to Growth: a global challenge, the first scientific vision of economic progress. The message was clear: however desirable, such progress could never be infinite.

The publication captured the spirit of the age. Less than a year after it appeared, the oil crisis amply demonstrated the paralysing effects of a lack of fossil fuels.

Factually inaccurate
Once the problems with the oil sheiks had been solved and economic advancement continued unabated, the study turned out to have been wide of the scientific mark. Although the basic tenet of the exhaustion of natural resources was correct, the lack of accurate forecasts was enough to consign the Club's findings to the historical scrap heap.

The society faded from the spotlight. A vanishing act was to only to be expected, reflects former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers, now an honorary member of the Club of Rome.

"That was a one-day event so you would expect the attention to diminish. Now the thesis that there are limits to resources has proven not to be all that accurate: we have been able to find new resources. But the Club was very accurate about the threat to the environment and nature."

Critics primarily point to the fact that the scientists did not go in search of solutions to avert the disaster they predicted. But Jan Ploeg, representative of the car industry heard at the current Club meeting in Amsterdam, heard the argument that rapid solutions to problems are simply not possible in a democracy:

"In one of the contributions during the master classes, someone was saying 'democracy is making it difficult'. But I am strongly convinced that democracy is of great value in this world. So, if you fail to convince the people and if you fail in making a big appeal then you are the loser. Not the people."

Public involvement
In the meantime it has become clear that we really are plundering the Earth in search of new fuel resources and that this process is very much leaving its mark. But the Club has not succeeded in getting the general public involved in such issues, says James Hansen, head of the US space agency NASA and one of the prominent scientists who warned of the greenhouse effect back in the 1980s.

"When I give a public talk, it tends to be to people who already understand the problem and that's not who we must reach. We need to reach the broader public so that they will put pressure on the political system. Otherwise the politicians respond to special interest groups."

With this comment, Hansen has put his finger on the problem. The noble efforts of the likes of Ruud Lubbers and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, not to mention the arrival of Queen Beatrix, are all well and good. But even in Amsterdam, the Club of Rome cannot escape the image of a society which may once have been well ahead of its time but which has since proved incapable of keeping up with the modern-day debate.

RNW translation (dd)
______________